"I guess you didn't trust us back then."

"Yeah.

"It's not a better story but it's - one where I don't keep getting my hopes up."

"I'm not going to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you."

"I guess I mean that - if I never got around to believing this about you then I wouldn't have - taken off my armor. And you wouldn't have been able to hurt me so badly. And - I want to believe that things will be better now, but I'm scared that believing that will make them hurt worse when they do."

"Mmm.'

"I guess I don't really know what to do about this right now.

"Would you want to sleep here tonight? You could - you don't have to dismiss me in the morning if you sleep here, right, you can just - say that you need to go - "

"Yeah. I could do that. If you'd like."

"I would like it. Only if you're not gonna do anything else. And I guess only if you can leave before Zakiya gets in for the morning, but I figure you would anyway, because of the rings? - and I guess only if you understand that the baby will wake up in the middle of the night and cry. - I am sorry to have so many - conditions - "

"I know that babies cry. You don't want me near your slave?"

"There are circumstances under which I would be okay with it, but - 

" - if Zakiya ever has any royal babies then I don't think she will be able to take care of me anymore. At least not - the way she does now."

"I would have plenty of girls if I wanted them, Korva, I don't need to take the specific one you've told me you like."

"I guess. As long as you don't start liking her specifically.

"I know it speaks poorly of people to be jealous, or nervous about things, but I just - I don't have anyone else - and Zakiya says it happens enough that there's a rule about how she's not supposed to be around you and - I'd feel so stupid if I ignored it and then I didn't have anyone at all - "

"I didn't know there was a rule about that. I didn't make it." Hug. "I will leave before that."

"It was a rule before you got here. They told me about it the first day. Just - they wanted me to not have to worry about this specific thing. I guess. That even if you had a lot of wives I would still be able to have one person who was just - on my side. - I know it's selfish."

"I want you to have a person who's on your side! She seemed - more interesting than average - but only because she reminded me of you when you're not sick."

...snuggle.

"Okay. Thank you. - is it okay if I go to sleep now - "

"Yeah."

Then she will sleep. And in the middle of the night she can feed the baby, and then she can go back to bed, and not be dismissed in the middle of the night from her bed while she's trying to sleep. 

And then - sometime tomorrow maybe they can see Fazil?

They can do that. He looks older and tireder than the last time she saw him.

She has paper and ink and a pen, and she can pass notes.

I'm sorry I haven't written in a long time. I don't really know what you know about - anything that's happened in the last year. Or two. I'm not any good at tracking time anymore.

"Uh," he says to Hagan, "I heard that you were expecting, and had a healthy baby, which we were all very glad of. And Verita ran away."

Oh. I see.

I don't really know how to succinctly explain where we're at, but - I spent most of the last year barely able to walk because I was in too much pain. I'm a little more mobile now, but it still hurts, all the time. Hagan says he didn't realize that he was hurting me. And - I understood that I wasn't supposed to argue, you see.

This is not really the main problem, there are many problems all tangled together, but it is sort of emblematic of them. And - I am broken now and I don't think I know how to put myself back together. 

I guess - I do want advice, about some other stuff. But I also wanted - someone who remembered what I was like before to hear about what had happened. To - confirm that it was bad. Although I guess I am also kind of scared that even if you do hear it you will think that it was not very bad compared to whatever's happening outside. 

"That sounds very bad! - it was known that you were sick, and I didn't know it was that bad but we already considered that very bad. Things have - mostly been okay outside. We renegotiated the treaties that the pharaoh's predecessor had with most of our neighboring countries. Usually on similar terms."

Nodnod. Sniffle.

Thank you.

Apart from the physical pain I also - I couldn't take it, you understand, letting myself be hurt that badly all the time, if I still had a properly connected desire to avoid pain, or to pursue things I wanted. And I was under the impression that Hagan wanted me to - not try to manipulate him, even the way someone in a lot of pain will start involuntarily flinching away from the source of that pain. And - I think he wouldn't have held genuinely involuntarily reactions against me, but there's a spectrum of voluntariness, and I didn't know how to give him everything that I was physically capable of giving him unless I didn't care about the outcome. Unless I didn't care about what was happening to myself. And I thought that that would be worth it, to me, because - I thought that if I was good enough then eventually Hagan would take the helmet off. So he wouldn't go to Hell. Even if I did. Even if there was only a shell of a person left, at the end, to go there.

So I ripped the wanting out. I wrote a story and I ripped most of my ability to want things out and put it away somewhere that I can't find. So I could endure it. And - there's a baby now. So maybe it was worth it. But there's not - me. Not very much of me. I'm sorry I'm not better at explaining, I lost a lot of words.

Hagan would like to find me again, now. I am trying to practice having preferences again. But - it's very hard.

"That, uh, seems like it would be," he says after a minute. "I - think it was very important to him that you get better from as soon as you started being sick, for what that's worth. He talked and thought about it all the time. It was most of what he spent his time on."